Alpha waves are less common in anxious people and, if they are present, they are smaller and less abundant than is helpful and beneficial. Anxiety and other negative emotions actually suppress alpha. We have worked with hundreds of research subjects and trainees who experienced ‘trait’ anxiety. Trait anxiety is an ingrained, lifelong pattern instead of ‘state’ anxiety that happens in response to a sudden and specific threatening situation or problem. Trait anxiety has long been thought by the psychiatric and psychological establishments to be stable across the adult life span, i.e., traits are considered to be mostly unchangeable aspects of your personality. However, with the ‘Biocybernaut Process,’ we have seen amazing changes in core dimensions of people’s personalities that the trainees can produce in just one week of Biocybernaut brain wave training. In several studies, I worked with people in the top 10% of anxiety. When these high anxiety people learned to increase their alpha activity, their anxiety then dropped to below average. The bigger the alpha increases, the larger was their reductions of anxiety. Similarly, when people suppress their alpha activity, their anxiety goes UP! There are also specific techniques that we teach people in the alpha and theta training to disappear fear and anxiety. The process involves creating a ‘worst-case scenario’ in which the person looks directly into the face of her/his fear and imagines all the very worst things that could happen.
When it is becoming overwhelmingly scary, the person sets the scary scenario aside and goes into a high alpha state. And the alpha does to the fear what
the morning sun does to the fog: it just evaporates it. You invite the fears out of their dark and scary hiding places to come at you and to overwhelm you. Just when they are about to overwhelm you, you set them aside (quite a disempowering indignity for a full-blooded fear), and you turn on the alpha waves in your brain. You flood the naked fears with alpha waves, and they are dissolved and washed away.
3.4.1 Anger and Hostility
During the Alpha One training, the trainees fill out computerized Mood Scales twice a day while wired up with their brain wave recording electrodes. The Mood Scales are done before and after the alpha brain wave feedback training. This has allowed us to build a large database of mood measurements and brain wave measurements. From this data, we have compared changes in the brain waves with changes in people’s moods and emotions. The comparisons are complex since we measure brain waves simultaneously at 8 different brain locations, 4 in the left hemisphere, and 4 in the right hemisphere. We can measure delta, theta, alpha, beta, and gamma (and sub-bands within those frequency ranges) at each location. Thus we can see how each mood alters the brain’s activity at different brain locations as one mood sweeps in and replaces a previous mood. An example would be how someone could go from feeling happy and friendly to angry or fearful upon learning some news about a loved one.
The results of this thorough, long-term research have shown that both anger and hostility have similar patterns in the brain. Both anger and hostility reduce alpha
activity at most brain locations and both increase beta brain wave activity. The method for reducing anger and hostility involves learning how to do deep forgiveness work. How this deep forgiveness is done in the alpha and theta brain wave training is described in Chapter 5, Expanded Spiritual Awareness
3.4.2 Sadness and Depression
In working with people in the Alpha One Brain Wave Training program, we find it very helpful to teach a simple emotional hierarchy.
- Joy
- Fear
- Sadness and Depression
- Apathy
In general, when people show up with obvious sadness and depression, this emotional hierarchy tells us to look for buried anger, which is one step above sadness and depression. Basically, this emotional hierarchy suggests that when there is buried or unacknowledged (and unexpressed) anger, the energy will come out as sadness and depression. Similarly, if the person shows up angry and raging, we know there is unacknowledged fear, the step above anger. When people discover what they are afraid of, we are so delighted because the step up from fear is joy. I often tell people, ‘When you explore, in the safety of the chamber, the face of your greatest fears, that will always be your fastest growth path.’ The method of getting rid of sadness and depression is similar to the method for anger. It involves deep forgiveness work. Sometimes in depression, a person has sunk into a lower level of physiological arousal, which, in and of itself, will lower alpha activity. Alpha and arousal have an inverted ‘U’ shaped relationship. At both high and low arousal, alpha is low, and only in the middle range of arousal is alpha at its naturally occurring peaks. If physical arousal is at too low a level, we will actually ask the trainee to do physical exercise as a part of their alpha brain wave training. For example, a young man, a student at San Francisco State, was deeply depressed, and his physical presence was a study in lassitude and torpor. He drooped in the chair. I asked him if there was any time during the week when he felt happy. He quickly said, ‘Oh, yes.’ He then described how, three times per week, he would go out and run for one hour on the track at SF State. He added that for several hours after that physical exercise,
he would feel fine, even happy The physical exercise would raise his normally low levels of arousal and bring him up the inverted ‘U’ shaped curve and into a state of higher alpha, so naturally, he would feel better. But when his arousal level would drift lower, the happy glow would fade, and he would eventually go back to being sad and depressed.
Forgiveness work is also the key to reducing sadness and depression. When this young man learned how to turn on his alpha waves and keep them on with his newfound alpha enhancement skill, he transformed from depressed to happy. To some, this might seem like a miracle, but to Biocybernauts, it is just an example of spiritual science in practice. Forgiveness will work miracles, but only if it is effective forgiveness. Alpha training helps people learn how to do effective forgiveness.
3.4.3 Apathy
Forgiveness work is also the key to reducing sadness and depression. When this young man learned how to turn on his alpha waves and keep them on with his newfound alpha enhancement skill, he transformed from depressed to happy. To some, this might seem like a miracle, but to Biocybernauts, it is just an example of spiritual science in practice. Forgiveness will work miracles, but only if it is effective forgiveness. Alpha training helps people learn how to do effective forgiveness.
Dealing with apathy is harder than dealing with the other emotions because the apathetic person is stuck in low energy physically, which results in a low alpha state. Fortunately, the process of alpha brain wave feedback is so inherently intriguing and absorbing that even apathetic people will be able to take an interest in their very own brain waves. I have found that people have an almost unlimited capacity to pay attention to, absorb, and to retain accurate information about themselves. This applies to hyperactive 8-year-old children and too apathetic adults. Feedback of your own brain wave activity touches you in such a deeply personal and profound way that you are fascinated despite your apathy or your distractibility.
The 5 level model of the emotional hierarchy suggests that apathy results when people have been depressed for so long that they give up fighting the depression. So an important part of the recovery process for an apathetic person is to admit that they really are sad and depressed. They need to feel that sadness, and only then can they begin to forgive that which made them sad, which of course is really something that made them angry, which is really something they are afraid of. When they stop all the self-deception and emotional subterfuge, they will break out into the clear light of the ‘Joy’ at the top of the hierarchy.
In the training course, the Mood Scales will help identify a whole range of emotions that you are not really in touch with. Dealing with these other emotions, rather than suppressing them, will also affect how much alpha your brain can produce. It is also a good idea to avoid regular exposure to violent movies, TV, and video games because they create the emotions of fear, anxiety, anger, hostility, sadness, and depression, all of which depress alpha. Besides avoiding things that suppress alpha, it is wise to embrace and seek out things that will enhance your IT. Daily prayer and meditation can be beneficial, especially if you pray and meditate in a quiet, dark place with your eyes closed and without distractions. In this setting, you can bring to mind feelings of flying and floating, feelings of light, lightness, and vast space – all of these will serve to enhance your alpha activity. You can also use the fragrance of lavender, which enhances alpha, and you can practice slow breathing exercises. A focus on your breath to gently and comfortably slow your breath will help increase alpha, especially if you are sitting quietly with your eyes closed. Getting more oxygen to the brain will also help your alpha production, and the slow deep breathing helps to oxygenate your blood, so your brain gets more oxygen. Learning to do these positive things and to avoid doing the beta enhancing but alpha suppressing things will help you begin to calm the hurricane in your brain. That is the beginning of your inner peace, harmony, and tranquility.
